Building better atomic clocks

How reliable is your wristwatch? Would it be out by just one second if it were still ticking 13 billion years from now? That is the sort of reliability that could soon be achieved by the next-generation of optical clocks that is being developed in metrology laboratories worldwide, including the UK's National Physical Laboratory near London

Physics World podcast: Building better atomic clocks

See below for details of how to download this programme and how to subscribe to future podcasts

While it is clear that physicists need to develop a new primary time standard, they have yet to agree on exactly which type of clock to choose, as Gill and Margolis explain to Physics World's Hamish Johnston. As well as having practical applications ranging from time-stamping financial transactions to satellite navigation, the NPL researchers explain that the new clocks will be used to do basic science such as testing whether the fundamental constants of physics are actually changing and measuring the Earth’s gravitational field.

If you enjoyed this podcast, then there is much more about the next-generation of atomic clocks in the feature article "Optical clocks" by Gill and Margolis

More ways to listen

Use this link to subscribe to our podcast service
The link takes you to the RSS feed, which you can use to subscribe to the Physics World podcast series. You will need to copy and paste the feed URL from the browser address bar into a new feed in your podcast software or feed reader. At this point, just click on the "Add feed" or "Subscribe" links.

1 comment

Something!

The "atomic clock" is flirting with the accuracy of 10^-18 against a second which corresponds to the gravitational time delation, when such the clock moves up/down just 1cm in the Earth's gravitational field.